


Walking Meadows in My Mind

by mortuus_lingua



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, OMG Tiny Fandom, sappy romance, this came out of the blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4097560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortuus_lingua/pseuds/mortuus_lingua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne is puzzled by Bog's inability to choose a site for the rebuilding of his castle. Bog is struggling with bridging goblin and fairy customs. Otherwise, this is pure sap. Have your insulin handy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking Meadows in My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Having watched the movie on DVD a few times, I suddenly started writing this story. I can only blame my sad love for the potential relationship of the Bog King and Marianne.

Marianne gazed forward, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with her … er … Bog King, and gnawed on her lower lip with her teeth while she swung her legs uncertainly from where they sat perched high in the snow-laden trees.

Winter had come to both kingdoms, fairy and dark alike, and Bog was still scouting for what he considered the perfect location to rebuild his castle. Marianne honestly couldn’t say if “castle” was the appropriate descriptor for the goblin stronghold, which had seemed more organic, more a tree than a building.

She had withheld any comment about his vacillation up to this point, but it was getting ridiculous. His subjects were currently housed in various shelters in the Dark Forest and even in the Fairy Kingdom among the more accommodating denizens (that would be the elves, of course). She couldn’t see what was taking him so long.

“Bog…” she ventured, sliding her gaze to the tall, hunched form at her side. “Is there something special you’re looking for?”

He grunted and his wings rustled, signalling agitation. She bit her lip and told herself it was none of her business, really. It was his kingdom after all, and what did she know about what goblins wanted?

She sighed and gazed up through the branches above them. The sky up there was piercing blue, very much like Bog’s eyes. She smiled to herself.

“Honestly,” he said, surprising her by the mildness of his tone, “I don’t really know.”

No kidding. She resisted rolling her eyes. “Well, how was the first… uh, castle built?”

Bog rested his chin in his fist, blue eyes brooding, focused below him. “My great-great grandmother married a beetle-goblin who refused to live anywhere else but that tree. So she helped him hollow out the first few halls, and we’d been adding since then.”

Marianne hummed to herself. “So he had strong opinions about where he wanted to live.”

Bog sighed. “Yes, he did.” He glanced sidelong at Marianne and silence descended.

It was a peculiar type of silence, as if he’d asked a question and was waiting for her to form an answer. Marianne blinked, gnawed on her lip, and tried to puzzle it out.

Minutes passed, and she was no closer to understanding what was going on. “Look, Bog,” she murmured, “What do you want me to say? I’m kind of baffled here.”

He sighed. He sounded vaguely put upon. Then, surprisingly, he stood and reached down a hand to help her balance as she too stood up, still perplexed. He did not let go of her hand, his having the advantage of being large, armored and warmly reassuring. She found herself gazing up into his face, triangular and malevolent, and very dear to her. “This is not the place, then,” he said. “Come, your father is expecting us.”

“Oh, right,” she muttered, weakly.

She hated riddles, and Bog’s behavior was turning into one.

****  


You know the story. Girl finds out her lover is a cheater. Boy is jilted. They fall in love. Except the girl is a fairy princess and the boy is a goblin king. So, yeah, you probably don’t know _this_ story.

So how about this: An elf invades the Dark Forest to liberate a love potion from the prisons of the Bog King, so the king retaliates by kidnapping the girl’s younger sister. Hijinks ensue.

Or this: the girl, having entered the dark kingdom to rescue her sister, finds she has a lot in common with the goblin king who has her sister imprisoned.

Or, really, just this: there is a night, and a full moon, and a feisty fairy princess, and a broody bog king, and there’s strange magic in the air. There’s a connection that neither of them expect, and when the Bog King’s palace is destroyed, and she fears he had died within it as it fell, she realizes that her chance of happiness with the one man she trusts and loves has died, too.

But, he lives! He even tells her he loves her in his endearingly bashful, stuttering manner. She may have reciprocated in a more spirited way. There are a few kisses. Her father, spirits bless him, attempts to accept this bizarre chain of events that has resulted in his eldest daughter and heir to the Fairy Kingdom joined with a creature who is not fairy, not at all like any courtiers he may have expected to sue for Marianne’s hand.  

And bless her sister Dawn for falling for a lowly country elf, making Marianne’s choice seem not as dramatic. Elves didn’t even have wings, which gives Bog at least a small advantage in her father’s view. Mating flights are rather difficult if one of the pair can’t fly.

****  


They flew into the Fairy Kingdom, hand in hand, and walked together into the main hall of the royal castle, where her father and sister were waiting to greet them.

As per usual, her father gave her a squeeze and a kiss, then left her to Dawn’s more effusive and exuberant greeting. While her sister started interrogating her on the state of their plans, she saw her father corral Bog, a serious expression on his face.

“...Dawn! Just a minute, all right,” Marianne exclaimed, attempting to calm her sister’s mile-a-minute string of questions while simultaneously trying to interpret the male conversation going on between the two kings. Bog’s head was down, but more in thought than agitation. She gauged the movements of his wings - some slight movement. Nothing bad. Yet.

“... and so! Did he kiss you this time, at least?” Dawn was bubbling.

“No, no kisses,” Marianne replied vaguely, too busy worrying about what was happening with Bog than thinking about what she was saying.

“What?! What is up with him, anyway?” Dawn turned and glared at the king in question, who, catching the glare out of the corner of his eye,  raised his eyebrows quizzically back at them before being diverted back into his conversation.

That would be one of the more important questions, Marianne reflected. Bog seemed weighed down by things, more than usual even for him. “I don’t know, but it’s all right.”  When Dawn gave her an incredulous look she added: “We do other things.”

Dawn’s eyes lit up in glee. “Oh! _Other things_!”

“And… and what about you and Sunny?” Marianne quickly interjected, before Dawn could start asking for details, or worse yet, start creating her own from her imagination.

“Oh, Sunny! He’s so romantic. Just this morning he picked me a huge bouquet…” Dawn began, illustrating with arm gestures.

Marianne kept an eye on her father and Bog. The hunch in his tall form had increased and his four narrow wings were starting that agitated quiver they got when he was about to lose his temper. “Sorry, Dawn,” Marianne said quickly, and walked over to slip her arm around her man’s waist, tucking up under his arm and leaning into him while giving her father the death glare of his life. “And just what has you two so serious?”

Bog’s hand tightened on her shoulder and his wings subsided. He stood up straighter to accommodate her. “Domestic issues, my heart.”

“Am I excluded from this conversation? Is this a _male_ domestic situation?” she asked in a slow, sugary dangerous tone.

Her father predictably blustered, and Bog relented. “Your father has some concerns.”

“I hope none of those concerns is that you aren’t a fairy,” she replied, syrupy sweet, keeping an eye on her father.

“Only the traditions, Marianne,” her father cried, hands up in surrender. “Customs!”

“ _Fairy_ customs?” she inquired dangerously.

“All right, tough girl,” Bog intervened mildly, with a smile. “I don’t require a protector just yet.”

“That depends on what’s going on here. Because if my father is telling you that the whole thing can’t work because some ancient ceremony…”

“A fairy wife needs a house!” her father cried.

“You have got to be kidding me!” she shouted back. “Bog has an _entire kingdom_ , and I already have a house. You know, _this palace_!”

“Sunny is building us a sweet cottage by the border,” Dawn piped in, eyes twinkling.

“Not helping!” Marianne cried.

“Customs are different,” Bog muttered.

Marianne paused to evaluate his expression. Weighed down again. _Oh, no_. “You mean, Dark Kingdom customs are different from fairy customs,” she surmised.  Then she remembered. Bog’s royal great-great grandmother creating a home to her husband’s very specific wishes. “Bog…” she said slowly. “Are you waiting… for me?”

Silence descended. Dawn’s eyes widened, scandalized. The Fairy King stared at Marianne, and then at Bog. Bog took a deep breath, and nodded.

****  
  


“Why didn’t you tell me?” she railed as they made their way to their chambers, in the wing that used to be hers and Dawn’s. Now it was hers and Bog’s. Dawn had been more than happy to vacate for Sunny’s rooms in the guest wing, if only to horrify their father.  “All you had to say was ‘Marianne,’” She approximated Bog’s regional brogue. “‘Where would you like to live?’ How can it be that hard?”

“The Dark Kingdom has no written traditions,” Bog replied with a heavy tread. “No one ever says, ‘A ruler must build for his spouse.” It just is. Even my mother, who thinks she’s the arbiter of all that is matrimonial, couldn’t really express it in words.” His expression was dark and unhappy.

She grabbed his arm and stopped him in front of her. “Hey,” she said up into his defeated face. “Are you starting to think all of this is too much of an imposition?” His eyes widened in dismay. “Because I’m not. Every day there’s something new, something I didn’t know. It’s an adventure, so don’t give me that long face. So what if we need to figure this stuff out? It’s better than the alternative.”

“Marianne,” he said, and there it was, a smile! “I do love you.”

“You better, and you better marry me, even if it means you’ll have my dad as an in-law and Dawn as your sister.”  She grinned. “Oh, and Sunny as a brother-in-law.”

Bog was starting to look horrified, then he grinned back. “You’ll have my mother as an in-law, which trumps all of my in-laws.”

“Nah, I like your mother,” Marianne replied lightly.

“You do? Why?”

Marianne laughed at his flummoxed expression, so comical on his usually scowling face . “She just wants you to be happy, and she’s super excited to have me as a daughter-in-law. Even Roland’s…” She stopped. “Never mind. The point is your mother is so supportive, whereas my dad…”

“He wants what’s best for you,” Bog rushed in. “It’s hard to fault him for it.”

“Oh, I can definitely fault him for it! He’s so protective that he doesn’t see the effects of it. I’m who I am because I resisted being protected, cherished and married off. I don’t even want to think who I would be today had I not…. What is it?”

“Was… hm… Roland one of those effects?”

“Well, Father definitely wanted the marriage even after I cancelled. To his credit, he didn’t know why I canceled. I didn’t tell him what had happened.”

“My heart, you haven’t told _me_ what happened, just that he didn’t love you.”

“Oh,” she realized. “Right. I was so humiliated, I just kept it to myself.” She took a deep breath. “I found him with another girl on the day of our wedding.”

Bog stopped dead in his tracks, staring. “On the day of …”

“Yeah, real classy. But I should be thankful, really. How else would have figured out how shallow he was?”

Bog’s brows lowered and his wings snapped out, rattling. “And your father wanted…”

“Oh, I was suckered just as much as my dad was,” she assured him, running a soothing hand up his arm. “Stupid, really. He appeared perfect on the outside, but was rotten on the inside. Now he’s happily in love with a bug. I guess that’s what we call irony?”

“I feel sorry for the bug.”

“Well, maybe a love potion might keep him faithful?”

They had to laugh at that, until they were opening the doors to their bedchambers. The front rooms were showing signs of dual habitation - Bog’s maps scattered over tables, and her growing collection of weapons and trinkets from Bog’s people, among them a very pointed gift of a comb from his mother.

She followed him to the maps and stood next to him, looking down. He slid an arm about her waist and she smiled.

“Okay,” she conceded. “There’s this meadow we were flying over the other day, with an old tree that I thought might be a good to dig under, maybe.”

They spent an hour poring through the maps and making plans until a fairy servant came by to remind them about dinner in the great hall, at which time they separated so she could put on something less traveled in and he did whatever he did. Really, his biology was still a bit of a mystery to her, except now she knew his carapace was permanently attached, and he basically was walking around naked, not terribly unusual amongst the goblins of the Dark Kingdom, but unheard of in the Fairy Kingdom.

She knew all of his soft parts that were unprotected and therefore her domain when he stopped being shy and let her close, and she knew the  place along his spine  and between the wings, a space equally sensitive to fairies and winged goblins alike because one couldn’t reach between their own wings to touch there.

He was with the maps again when she emerged in a dark rose-petal gown picked out by Dawn (Marianne was more than willing to admit that without Dawn’s intervention, she’d be happily continuing to attend social events in her pants and sword). She still preferred trousers, but she liked the way Bog paused when she tried something new. And face it, she liked pretty things sometimes just because they were pretty.

She spread her wings and did a twirl with a coquettish simper, flaunting for him. She was rewarded by his slow straightening from the table and brightening of his eyes, a look she was beginning to recognize as only for her.

“Fairy princess,” he purred with a grin only vaguely reminiscent of his old sneer.

She rolled her eyes. “Bog King,” she replied in kind, and threaded her arm through his.

****  
  


She was surprised that Bog, reclusive and uncooperative in the past, had made an effort to, if not fit in, then to not alienate the fairy court more than he already was by, you know, not being a fairy.

She loved Bog, but very few fairies besides her sister have tried to understand him, or to bridge the gap between fairy and goblin. He was too strange in their view, physically and in all other ways, unlovely, and bristly.

But Bog was kind and courteous to Dawn and her father, shyly affectionate with Marianne, and more than willing to adopt fairy customs when he was residing in the Fairy Kingdom.

Now they were sitting down to dinner, being served bits of dried fruit from their winter stores, and Bog was politely listening to Dawn (or pretending to). Marianne smiled, realized just how dopey her smile probably was, and focused back on her food only to intercept Sunny’s love-smitten smile as he watched Dawn’s animated arm motions as she described something or another. Oh dear, is that what she looked like when she looked at Bog?

Biting her lip, she glanced at her father, who had the look of long suffering and who was manfully attempting to keep up conversation with one in a long line a widowed court women who wouldn’t mind being queen.

When Marianne turned her attention back to Bog and Dawn, they were heads down into a quiet conversation and Dawn was wagging a finger at him. _Uh oh_. “Have you told her we’re going out tomorrow to look at that meadow?” she asked during a lull, leaning into his shoulder.

“That would suppose I could get a word in edgewise,” he muttered.

Afterwards, they retired. Marianne felt a sense of dread when she caught Dawn making weird faces at Bog when they were saying goodnight to everyone.

“Whatever was that about?” she asked.

“Your sister has some ideas about courtship.”

“Well, yes, because that’s all she thinks about! She’s not imposing her fairy ideas of courtship, is she?”

“In a way, but it’s not anything I haven’t heard before from my mother.”

Oh, dear. Whatever it was, Bog wasn’t ready to expand on it quite yet. When they had reached their set of rooms, Bog stopped as soon as the door closed behind them and grasped her by the arms. She stared quizzically up into his eyes, which were glinting with determination.

“I am not what your family would have wanted for you,” he said, “but I am what _you_ want.”

Marianne smiled, surprised at his sudden confidence. “Yes! Is that what Dawn was saying to you?”

“Not exactly,” he said, cupping her face and leaning in to kiss her.

This wasn’t their first kiss, but it was the most deliberate. To say that he was carefully maneuvering was an understatement. His prominent nose required a bit of tilting, but once the angle was achieved, they both groaned. Perfection. Marianne slid her arms around his ribcage and hung on tightly. Bog was warm, solid and unmoving over her, and his mouth was a revelation. For once, he was taking what he wanted, no shyness at all. It was glorious.

It was typical of them that one impulsive action from either of them triggered the same in the other. She bit playfully at his lip, and he retaliated until they were both breathing heavily, caught up close in the narrowed world of building pleasure.

“I think I need to thank my sister,” Marianne eventually said into his armored shoulder, inhaling the rich scent of autumn leaves and fermented apples. He laughed quietly, his chin resting on the top of her head. “Did she tell you that you weren’t kissing me enough?”

“Almost those exact words, my heart,” he murmured into her hair. “Was she right?”

“I didn’t mind that we were taking it slow, because, well, it’s all rather new, but I like this.” When he squeezed her closer, she gasped, laughing: “Okay, I really like it! I was wondering why we seemed to be at a stalemate.”

Bog sighed. “Well, you just can’t go rushing into these things, not until you know how everything fits together.”

“Fits together?” She blinked and angled her head back to stare up at him. “What are you talking about?”

His face colored. “You know, biologically … you have to discuss how it will work, and what gender, and…” He trailed off.

A mortifying, long pause expanded into the silence.

“... oh, so fairies don’t talk about this?” he asked hesitantly.

“NO!”

“Then how do you … know?”

“We just do! It’s really clear when you’re, you know, kissing, and… oh, man this is awkward.”

“Clearly, there are more differences than just customs,” Bog said quietly.

“Wait, wait. So, how do you figure out how things, uh, fit?”

He gave her a meaningful stare, brows raised.

“Oh. Right.” She blushed. “That’s, uh, not so different, I suppose, except there’s probably, um, lots of little steps instead of just… going at it.”

One of his brows, impressively, rose higher.

“...and that would take… a bit of time…”

Slow nod and a bit of a smile, encouraging.

Goblins came in a lot of different forms, sizes, and genders, some amphibian, some plant, and some insectoid. Some were not even any of those. Negotiation would be key, she realized. Careful negotiations.“Right. Okay, I’m starting to see the light.”

Bog’s smile widened. “Clever Marianne,” he purred.

Marianne shivered at the bolt of pleasure liquefying her her insides, and licked her lips. “Maybe we need to start figuring that out,” she said softly.

“Tonight?” he murmured directly into her ear, in the silky low tone that made her sigh, recalling nights of flying within his arms, the confident movements of his masculine body.

“Right now,” she returned. She grabbed her hand and pulled him determinedly to her bedchamber. “It’s about time you got an education on fairy anatomy.”

Marianne never told Dawn what happened to the petal dress, but from that night on the smell of crushed roses would trigger pleasurable memories of that first of many nights of exploration.


End file.
